Noob question: whats the best way to hook up a 3rd monitor

uphillcastle

uphillcastle

uphillcastle

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I am wanting to get another monitor to learn a 3d app.

I have two on a workstation card -quadro fx 3700...

Do I need to get another Nvidia card? workstations are pretty expensive is there an alternative nvidia card?

What about driver issues?

Thanks guys
 
im quite sure you need DX11 in particular eyefinity to have a 3 monitor set up
ATI HD 5750,5770
ATI HD 5850,5870
 
lol i coulve sworn i wrote that on a reply the other day de ja vu :)
my above reply only applies to setting them up next to each other as in streching the one picture across 3 screens
 
I *think* that you just need 2 graphics cards (if they both have 2 outputs), running in non xfire or sli mode. Any card should do, but i *think* vista only allows one display driver, so it'd have to be nvidia:confused:
 
Didaco said:
lol i coulve sworn i wrote that on a reply the other day de ja vu :)
my above reply only applies to setting them up next to each other as in streching the one picture across 3 screens
Click to expand...

Lolwhut?!

Stick in a second graphics card (Same brand is very much preferable; XP allows you to use different, but it's a PITA), and plug in your third monitor.

Eyefinity, and other spanning technologies are only needed if you want the PC to see them as a single screen, as opposed to three separates.
If you're familiar with using two, three is a piece of cake.

-Leezer-
 
I run 3 x 19" screens.

To do this I have:

Nvidia GTX260 (on 16x PCI) running two spanned monitors (center and right).
Nvidia 7800GTX (on 4x PCI) running left monitor.

I can't span all three because the spanning must be done on one card, and each card only has two monitor outputs.

You don't need expensive graphics cards, an old £15 Nvidia 7300 card will handle your third monitor. It is easier to have cards that use the same drivers however. You will of course need card slots in your motherboard.

Windows has had multi monitor support since Windows 95.

Also running a card on 4XPCI makes no difference for 2D.

EDIT. There is another way of running three monitors, you need a device (box) from Matrox (forgot name), that connects 3 monitor inputs, then a single input into your graphics card. This fools your card that it's actually one monitor.
 
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Drivers will be interesting. I don't know what windows/nvidia will make of of quadro and geforce drivers running alongside each other. Please report back your findings, I've got an 8800gt running with quadro drivers and would like to add a gaming card alongside.

ATI gaming card + nvidia workstation card is unlikely to go well. matrox will cost a lot more than an old nvidia card. Good luck
 
I run an ATI 4870 and a nVidia 7600GT together on windows 7 (running 3 screens) and I don't have any driver issues.

Only think to note I only run the full installer for the ati, thus giving me all the control over the 4870, and I just extract the nVidia drivers and use the windows driver installer to just install the base drivers for the 7600GT.

I had some issues on Vista, that I had to install the drivers for the 7600GT first and then the 4870, but I've not had any issues with windows 7 :)
 
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